VAT’s the way, uh-huh uh-huh, I like IT

VAT and fun. It sounds contradictory but with the right approach they can actually become friends. In fact, it constitutes one of the fundamental considerations that eventually led to the inception of 4apps and the subsequent development of itax4apps. Since the very beginning of computerization, countless processes have been automated for being tedious/repetitive, expensive, time consuming and/or error-prone. Even though VAT declarations meet at least most of these criteria, administration staff around the globe still perform most of the work manually and under great time pressure. WHY?

Inadequate

This especially applies to Oracle EBS (E-Business Suite) environments, as 4apps founders Frank Laarhoven, Diederick Bosman and Laurens Voogt have all learned from experience having worked for consulting organizations such as Oracle, Cap Gemini and Deloitte. Marc Plug, who joined 4apps in 2008 after completing various commercial roles within the Oracle community, will not tell you otherwise. During various implementations in general, we often felt like performing a ‘trick’ of some kind just to get the application implemented on time and on budget. Moreover, we discovered that reporting is hardly ever taken seriously during the implementation phase. The end users were therefore compelled to use the standard Oracle reports that are inadequate for VAT summary statements and reconciliation with the GL.

Frustrated and embarrassed

On top of that, it also takes a lot of time to run these reports, which is quite inconvenient with strict deadlines imposed by tax authorities. In other words, the provisions for meeting fiscal reporting requirements that have been included in Oracle EBS are inadequate to say the least. To make things even worse, ever more countries are imposing requirements on organizations to provide so-called SAF-T files (Standard Audit Files for Tax purposes). These very specific audit files contain different types of financial transactions and must be submitted in a country-specific format. Feeling frustrated by these deficiencies and growing challenges, and a little embarrassed about having been somewhat incompetent, we knew it was time to set things straight. Before we knew it we were developing and building our own BI-like solution that ultimately resulted in itax4apps!

We will explain how it all works in a range of blogs. In addition to explaining features and other serious matters, we will offer you stories that are remarkable, though-provoking or even downright funny! So stay tuned.